Folks, The GOP/MAGA party that has emerged is NOT a conservative party. I grant you that. But it is a party with some conservative leanings that has emerged from the democratic process, and, unlike unbridled conservativism, it has the potential to gain a voting plurality unlike anything we have seen since Reagan. So let's look at the good, bad and ugly of the current GOP/MAGA movement (from my point of view):
THE GOOD
1. Peace through strength, avoidance of foreign wars
2. Deregulation, especially in the energy sector
3. Secure borders
4. Conservative appointments to the courts
5. Resistance to the woke agenda
THE BAD
1. Lack of fiscal responsibility
2. Tariffs and isolationism
3. Failure to dismantle the bloated federal bureaucracy (Trump did not even go after Public Broadcasting or Education the first time around)
4. No genuine appetite for constitutionally-limited government, or individual freedom
5. Bias toward devalued dollar
THE UGLY
1. The personality cult That fails to question the cult leader
2. The personality of the cult leader himself, whose narcissism is a weakness that can be exploited and then betrayed by the worst sorts of sycophants
I won't bother to try to make the case that the good outweighs the bad and the ugly. I will simply say that under a future Biden or Harris (or someone else?) administration, there is no good. Only bad and ugly, and getting worse and uglier by the day. So I will vote for Trump, and I will expect only three things from him: energy deregulation, border security and good judicial appointments. If he delivers on those three things, I feel my vote will have been justified.
Finally, let me say this. We may think that voting no on Trump now might usher in some future conservative utopia, free from the mass hallucination that is MAGA. I have come to realize that politics does not really work that way. If it did, there would have been a conservative utopia after George HW Bush or Bob Dole. There wasn't. There never will be, for the simple reason that thoughtful, constitutionally-principled conservatism is a minority view in this nation, and has been for three generations.
We are a parasitic nation, and parasites are not going to vote for anything that keeps them from being able to suck sustenance from the host.